Fernand Paul Achille Braudel (French: [fɛʁnɑ̃ bʁodɛl]; 24 August 1902 – 27 November 1985) was a French historian. His work focused on three main projects: The Mediterranean (1923–49, then 1949–66), Civilization and Capitalism (1955–79), and the unfinished Identity of France (1970–85). He was part of the Annales School, a group of French historians and scholars who studied history and society during the 1950s and 1960s.

Braudel believed that large economic and social factors were important in understanding how history is made and written. In a 2011 poll by History Today magazine, he was named the most important historian of the previous 60 years.

Education

Fernand Braudel was born in Luméville-en-Ornois, in the Meuse department of France. He lived in a rural area before industrialization with his grandmother until he was seven years old, when he moved to Paris to live with his father. His father, a mathematics teacher, helped him with his schoolwork. Braudel’s maternal grandfather had been part of the Paris Commune, and Braudel avoided discussing this part of his family.

Braudel studied at the Lycée Voltaire from 1913 to 1920, where he learned Latin and Greek. He later attended the Sorbonne, where he studied under Henri Hauser and earned a high-level history qualification in 1923. He taught at a secondary school in Constantine, French Algeria, in 1923–1924, where he met his future second wife, Paule Pradel. He also taught at the University of Algiers until 1932, with a break for military service in the French Army of the Rhine from 1925 to 1926.

During his time in Algeria, Braudel became interested in the Mediterranean Sea and wrote about Spain’s influence in Algeria during the 16th century. He began researching his doctoral thesis on the foreign policy of King Philip II of Spain (ruled 1556–1598) and used archives in Simancas, Spain, and other Mediterranean locations, including Venice, Valencia, and Dubrovnik, with help from his wife. From 1932 to 1935, he taught at secondary schools in Paris, where he first met Lucien Febvre, a co-founder of the Annales journal (1929).

By 1900, the French had strengthened their cultural influence in Brazil through the Brazilian Academy of Fine Arts. São Paulo did not yet have a university, but in 1934, a French supporter named Julio de Mesquita Filho invited anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and Braudel to help create one. This led to the founding of the University of São Paulo on January 25, 1934. Braudel arrived in Brazil in March 1935, after his daughter was born, and took over a position previously held by Émile Coornaert. He worked within the French-led Pan-Latinism movement, which aimed to spread French cultural influence, and supported São Paulo’s elites in their efforts to gain social and national dominance. His colleagues included João Cruz Costa, Roberto Simonsen, and Caio Prado Júnior. Brazilian officials, such as Governor Armando de Sales Oliveira and Marshal Cândido Rondon, attended evening lectures by French professors.

Braudel used his time in Brazil for intellectual exploration and later called it the “greatest period of his life.” He was fascinated by São Paulo’s rapid growth during the early Vargas Era and noted that some Brazilian academics claimed there was no “social question” in the new world. Unlike Lévi-Strauss, Braudel did not support the Communist-backed National Liberation Alliance but held a more centrist view. In his 1937 work The Concept of a New Country, he compared Brazil favorably to Algeria and the United States, citing Brazil’s “social malleability” and its status as a “young European civilization.” Later, he referred to Algeria, with its “uneducable” population, as “a failed Brazil.”

Career

In 1937, Braudel returned to Paris from Brazil. He traveled with Febvre and his family on a 20-day sea voyage because they had booked passage on the same ship. During this time, Braudel was influenced by the Annales School. In 1938, he became an instructor in history at the École pratique des hautes études. He worked with Febvre, who later read early versions of Braudel’s major work and gave him editorial advice. Braudel began writing his book about Philip II’s Mediterranean at Febvre’s home in the Juras. He only expressed political opinions when he condemned the Munich Agreement in 1938.

When war broke out in 1939, Braudel was called to military service. On June 29, 1940, he was captured by the Germans as a lieutenant in the 156th Infantry Regiment in the Vosges. He was first held at a prisoner-of-war camp in Neuf-Brisach and then at Oflag XII-B in the citadel of Mainz. In Mainz, Braudel became the rector of the camp university, which earned him respectful treatment from camp officials and allowed him to borrow books and journals from the local library for his research. Under the Geneva Convention, he received his salary, which he used to buy German books, such as works by Werner Sombart and Max Weber. He also ordered materials from France, including the full collection of the Annales journal.

In June 1942, Braudel was suspected of involvement with the French Resistance and transferred to a special camp (Oflag X-C) near Lübeck, where he remained for the rest of the war. In the camp, he befriended Catholic clerics and the historian Henri Brunschwig. Without access to his personal books or notes, Braudel relied on his strong memory to draft his major work, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II. He described his long-term perspective as a reaction to the war’s troubling news. He sent completed sections of his work to Febvre in Paris, first through the International Red Cross and later with written permission from the German military. He also occasionally sent books to Febvre. After his release in 1945, Braudel revised his work by comparing it to surviving archival materials stored in a metal container in his Paris home. He edited and rearranged the text, then destroyed the manuscripts—only a small fragment given to Febvre remains. During the war, his wife and children lived in Algeria.

After 1945, Braudel became a leader of the second generation of Annales historians. He defended his thesis at the University of Paris in 1947. That same year, with Febvre and Charles Morazé, he secured funding from the French government and the Rockefeller Foundation to establish the Sixième section for economic and social sciences at the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE). This section became the main hub for historical research in France. In 1948, the Centre de recherches historiques was created at EPHE, with Braudel as its director. In 1949, he joined the Collège de France after Febvre’s retirement. He co-founded the academic journal Revue économique in 1950. After Febvre’s death in 1956, Braudel led the Sixième section and attracted scholars like Roland Barthes and Jacques Lacan. He became the editor-in-chief of the Annales in 1957, solidifying his influence on French historical studies. In 1960, he received an additional $1 million from the Ford Foundation.

In 1962, Braudel and Gaston Berger used Ford Foundation funds and government money to create the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (FMSH), which Braudel directed from 1970 until his death. FMSH focused on international collaboration to spread the Annales approach globally. In 1972, Braudel stepped down as editor-in-chief of the Annales, though his name remained on the journal’s masthead.

In 1962, Braudel wrote A History of Civilizations as a textbook, but the French Ministry of Education rejected it because it rejected traditional storytelling methods. He retired in 1968. In 1975, the Sixième section became the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, an independent public institution. In 1984, Braudel was elected to the Académie française, with Maurice Druon delivering his introduction speech.

La Méditerranée

Fernand Braudel's first book, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II (1949), translated as The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, is his most important work. It has been called a "watershed," meaning a major turning point in historical study.

For Braudel, the Mediterranean is not one single sea but a large, complex area with many different parts. People live, travel, fish, fight wars, and face dangers in this region. The sea connects with land areas like plains and islands. Life on the plains is varied, and the southern regions are shaped by religious differences, such as Catholicism and Islam, as well as cultural and economic influences from the north. The Mediterranean cannot be studied alone because it is connected to areas outside of it. Focusing only on borders can lead to misunderstandings.

Braudel divided history into three levels of time. The first level is geographical time, which includes slow, long-term changes in the environment, such as weather patterns and natural cycles. These changes are slow but unavoidable. The second level includes long-term social, economic, and cultural history. Here, Braudel examined the Mediterranean’s economy, social groups, and civilizations. Changes at this level happen faster than environmental changes. For example, he studied patterns like the rise and fall of aristocracies over two or three centuries. The third level is the time of events, which focuses on individual people and specific occurrences. This is the shortest time frame and is the focus of the third part of his book, which discusses "events, politics, and people."

Braudel’s view of the Mediterranean includes not only the sea but also the desert and mountains. In deserts, people often move together as a community, while mountain life is more settled. A practice called transhumance, where people move between mountains and plains with the seasons, is common in Mediterranean regions.

Braudel’s work used ideas from other social sciences and focused on long-term changes, called the longue durée. He believed that major events were less important than long-term trends. His book was widely respected, but most historians did not try to copy his approach. Instead, they focused on smaller, specialized studies. His work helped start serious study of the Mediterranean and increased the global recognition of the Annales School of history.

In the 1966 second edition of his book, Braudel aimed to make his research more precise by using economic data. He noted that over the previous twenty to thirty years, the study of economic events and short-term trends had become an important alternative to traditional focus on political events.

The second edition was published in 70,000 copies, compared to only 2,500 copies of the first edition. It was only after the English translation of the second edition was published that Braudel’s work began to influence scholars in English-speaking countries.

Capitalism

After La Méditerranée, the most well-known work by Fernand Braudel is Civilisation Matérielle, Économie et Capitalisme, XV–XVIII ("Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century"). The first volume of this three-part book was published in 1967 and translated into English in 1973. The final volume was released in 1979. This book provides a wide-ranging history of the non-industrial modern world, focusing on how everyday people helped shape economies. Like Braudel’s other major works, it combines traditional economic topics with detailed descriptions of how economic events affected daily life, such as food, clothing, and social traditions.

The third volume, titled The Perspective of the World, was influenced by the work of German scholars such as Werner Sombart. In this section, Braudel examines how Western capitalist centers influenced the rest of the world. He wrote the series to explain the modern world and to challenge the Marxist view of history.

Braudel described long-term patterns in the capitalist economy that he believed began in Europe during the 12th century. Over time, different cities and later nations became centers of these patterns: Venice from the 13th to 15th centuries (1250–1510); Antwerp and Genoa in the 16th century (1500–1569 and 1557–1627, respectively); Amsterdam from the 16th to 18th centuries (1627–1733); and London (and England) from the 18th to 19th centuries (1733–1896). Braudel used the word "structures" to describe social systems, such as habits, beliefs, and physical systems like roads and buildings. He argued that structures formed in Europe during the Middle Ages helped shape modern European cultures. He believed that the independence of city-states, even after being controlled by larger nations, played a key role in this development.

Braudel claimed that capitalists were usually monopolists, not entrepreneurs in competitive markets as often assumed. He stated that capitalists did not specialize or rely on free markets, which made his ideas different from those of both liberal thinkers (like Adam Smith) and Marxists. Braudel believed that governments in capitalist countries supported monopolists rather than protecting competition. He argued that capitalists used their power and cleverness to control the majority of the population.

In Braudel’s view, agrarian structures are long-term systems tied to farming. These structures depend more on regional, social, cultural, and historical factors than on government actions.

L'Identité de la France

Braudel's final and most personal book was L'Identité de la France (The Identity of France), which was not completed when he died in 1985. In this book, Braudel openly shared his deep love for his country, stating at the beginning that he had loved France as if it were a woman. Reflecting his focus on long-term historical patterns, Braudel examined centuries and millennia rather than years or decades. He argued that France's identity comes not from its politics or economics but from its geography and culture. This idea, which he explored in a previous work that studied villages (bourg) and regional dialects (patois), showed how local history and place fit into a larger view of time and space.

L'Identité de la France was influenced by a sense of nostalgic longing. Braudel described a "deep France" (France profonde), a way of thinking rooted in the lives of peasants, which he believed had remained unchanged despite major changes in French history and the Industrial Revolution.

In this book, Braudel stated that economics is "the most scientific of the sciences of man," while history is an incomplete one.

Historiography

Before the Annales approach, history was often written with a focus on short periods or major events. Braudel and his followers believed in studying history over long periods, called the longue durée, to understand how factors like geography, climate, and technology slowly influenced human actions over time. After experiencing two world wars and major political changes in France, Annales historians felt that sudden changes or breaks in history were not as important as the slow, continuous forces shaping society. They argued that deep, lasting structures in society, such as economic systems or cultural traditions, were more central to history than short-term events or the decisions of individuals. They disagreed with the Marxist idea that history should be used to support revolutions, instead emphasizing the equal importance of both the basic structures of society (like infrastructure) and the visible aspects (like institutions or politics). Braudel believed that long-term environmental and mental structures shaped human actions over time, even when people were unaware of these influences.

Braudel highlighted the struggles of people who were often overlooked in history, such as slaves, peasants, and the poor. He noted that most historical records come from wealthy, educated groups, and he emphasized how the lives of marginalized people contributed to the power and wealth of societies. His work often included images of everyday life rather than pictures of kings or nobles. He believed that human actions were limited by larger forces, such as nature or society, as seen in his view that people could not control their environment. However, this focus on objective factors sometimes led Braudel to make claims that were not fully supported by evidence, such as his belief that overpopulation was the main reason for the expulsion of Jewish people from Spain, Portugal, and Sicily in the 15th century.

Braudel’s ideas influenced later theories, such as world-systems theory, which examines how global economic and social structures shape history.

Awards and honors

• Free University of Brussels
• University of Cambridge
• University of Chicago
• University of Cologne
• University of Geneva
• Leiden University
• University of Oxford
• University of Padua
• Complutense University of Madrid
• University of Montreal
• University of Warsaw
• Yale University

• Commander of the Legion of Honour
• Commander of the Order of Academic Palms

• Member of the French Academy
• Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities
• Member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
• Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
• Member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts

Binghamton University in New York had a Fernand Braudel Center until the year 2020, and there is a Fernand Braudel Institute of World Economics in São Paulo, Brazil.

In a 2011 poll by History Today magazine, Fernand Braudel was chosen as the most important historian over the past 60 years.

Books

• La Méditerranée et le Monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II, trois volumes (1949; deuxième édition, révisée et augmentée, 1966)
• Ecrits sur l'histoire (1969) ISBN 2-08-081023-5
• Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme, xv et xviiie siècles
• L'identité de la France, trois volumes (1986)
• Grammaire des civilisations (1987; première publication dans Suzanne Baille, Fernand Braudel et Robert Philippe, Le Monde actuel : histoire et civilisations. Classes terminales, propédeutique, classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles, Paris: Belin, 1963)
• Le Modèle italien (1989; première publication en italien sous le titre « L'Italia fuori d'Italia: Due secoli e tre Italie » dans Storia d'Italia, tome 2.2, dirigé par Corrado Vivanti et Ruggiero Romano, Turin: Einaudi, 1974; réimprimé séparément sous le titre Il secondo Rinascimento: Due secoli e tre Italie, Turin: Einaudi, 1986)
• Les Mémoires de la Méditerranée : préhistoire et antiquité (1998, édité par Roselyne de Ayala et Paule Braudel, avec des notes de Jean Guilaine et Pierre Rouillard)

• The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, deux volumes (1972 et 1973, traduit par Siân Reynolds)
• Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism (1977, traduit par Patricia M. Ranum)
• Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, trois volumes (1979, traduit par Siân Reynolds)

• On History (1980, traduit par Sarah Matthews)
• The Identity of France, deux volumes (1988–1990, traduit par Siân Reynolds)

• Out of Italy, 1450–1650 (1991, traduit par Siân Reynolds)
• A History of Civilizations (1994, traduit par Richard Mayne)
• The Mediterranean in the Ancient World (UK) / Memory and the Mediterranean (US; tous deux 2001, traduits par Siân Reynolds)